181

To: Y. KH. LUTOVINOV

Written: Written on May 30, 1921
Published:
First published in part in 1957 in the magazine Voprosy Istorii KPSS No. 2.
Published in full in 1959 in Lenin Miscellany XXXVI.
Printed from the original.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1976,
Moscow,
Volume 45,
pages 160b-165.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov
Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
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• README

I have read your letter of 20/V, arid it has left me with
a very sad impression. I expected that in Berlin, having
had a rest, having recovered from your illness, having taken
a look “from outside” (you always get a clearer view from
outside), and having thought things out, you would arrive
at clear-cut and exact conclusions. Over here, you were
in a “mood” of dissatisfaction. A mood which was almost
unconscious, a blind feeling, not resulting from thought.
So I expected you to have clear-cut and exact conclusions
instead of the mood. Perhaps, I thought, We would differ
over the conclusions, but these would still be clear-cut and
exact conclusions drawn by one of the “founders” of the
“opposition” (as you admit yourself to be in your letter).

Your letter leaves a sad impression because, instead
of clarity and precision, there is again this dark mood with
the addition of “tough words”.

Is that a fact? The names? I don’t know anyone except
Rudzutak, but I do know that it was made up with care.
There could have been mistakes. They must be corrected.
But for that they should be first pinpointed, so as to leave
no room for any dark moods (and the gossip which
frequently lurks in this darkness: gossip loves darkness and
anonymity).

Rudzutak? What’s wrong with him as a worker? “He is
physically worn-out”? Is there anyone among us who isn’t?
We shall get him back from Turkestan as soon as we put
Joffe and Sokolnikov back on their feet.

What then does our “tendentious factionalism” consist
of? Is it the fact that a supporter of the Party congress
majority is put at the head of the railwaymen’s C.C.? Is
that what you call “factionalism”? If that is so, please
explain to me what meaning should be given to
factionalism and to the Party spirit.

Surely you will not declare that it was acting in the
“Party spirit” for the leader of the former Workers’
Opposition to introduce a C.C. list at the Metalworkers’
Congress a few days ago, where of the 22 R.C.P. members, 19
are supporters of the old Workers’
Opposition?[1] If that
is not “tendentious factionalism”, if that is not reviving
the faction, then I must say that you have been using the
concept of factionalism in a most specific way, most
unusually, even out of the human context.

2) You say that at the head of the All-Russia Central
T.U.C. there is a “physically worn-out person”, i.e.,
Tomsky? He was to have been replaced by a trio of secretaries,
and has now been removed altogether. Thus, your shot
at factionalism has ricocheted against you. There’s already
a fact for you.

3) In your struggle against the outrages of the Berlin
mission you have come up against “fierce resistance from
Moscow all the way up to Ilyich”.

In the light of the “facts”, which of these tough words
is closer to the truth? What about that?

There have been scandalous practices at the Berlin
mission, Moscow (and Krasin) did not hamper or resist you,
but helped you to combat them, by giving more authority
to Stomonyakov, whom you extolled most decidedly.

4) You say you have discovered there, in Berlin, a
number of the “most brazen scoundrels and thieves”, and
Moscow has not removed them.

Perhaps you are not aware of the way complaints are
addressed to the C.C.? to the Orgbureau? to the
Politbureau? to the C.C. Plenary Meeting?

There has not been a single complaint from you either
in the Politbureau or the Plenary Meeting. There’s a fact
for you.

(In brackets: you and I had a difference over Shklovsky,
but you did not put it before the
Politbureau.[2] I knew
Shklovsky as a Bolshevik for years before the revolution.
Being an honest man, he would have helped you to combat
the “scoundrels and thieves”. But you impeded
Shklovsky’s departure for Berlin, although over here he is not
much of a worker, not doing anything important.)

5) Grzhebin. About him, and only about him, I read
yesterday the protest you and Stomonyakov sent in to the
C.C. We shall examine it at the earliest
sitting.[3]

We in the C.C. have had our differences over Grzhebin.
Some said: he should be removed altogether, because he
might be cheating as a publisher. Others said: as a publisher
he will publish at a lower cost. We prefer to have him cheat
us out of 10,000, but put out the cheaper and better
publication.

A commission of both sides equally represented was
elected. I was not on it, because of my “partiality” (some
said) to Gorky, who defended Grzhebin.

The commission decided the case unanimously, I don’t
remember what it decided exactly. I think it was to buy
from Grzhebin if it was cheaper.

Consequently, your conclusion: “they were not guided
by state considerations”, but were trying to pacify Gorky—
is a downright untruth. And you write: “I am sure”!!! What
do you call it when the people work out a “conviction” for
themselves before checking on the facts, which are easily
checked?

6) Lomonosov is a brilliant specialist, but has been
“exposed by Krasin as engaging in the most criminal
commercial transactions”.

That is not true. If Krasin had exposed Lomonosov
committing a crime, Lomonosov would have been removed
and prosecuted. You heard a rumour and turned it into
a piece of scandal.

Krasin wrote me and the C.C.: Lomonosov is a brilliant
specialist, but is less suitable in trade and has made
mistakes. Having come over here, and having met Lomonosov
and examined the documents, Krasin said nothing about
mistakes, let alone crime.

Here is your choice: either to start a serious case in the
Control Commission (or wherever else you wish) about
Lomonosov’s crimes, or to retract the rumour you have so
flippantly picked up.

7) “We are having appointments to the trade department
here of rogues like this one: in the past a manufacturer
whom the Soviet power deprived of all his furs, and he is
now being sent to sell these furs. For pity’s sake, what are
things coming to?”

That is what you write. This is indeed good reason to
feel sad. The founder of the whole opposition reasoning on
such lines!

It’s the same thing as an ignorant muzhik saying: “A
thousand tsarist generals were deprived of their land and
rank, and these generals have now been attached to the Red

Army”! Indeed, we have possibly over a thousand of those
who had been generals and landowners under the tsar,
serving in key posts in the Red Army. But it has won.

If you know that there is a “rogue”, how can you, a
person in office under the Soviet power, hush up his name?
Not start proceedings against this so-and-so?

But if you don’t know his name, it means this is just
another rumour? just another piece of scandal?

I have gone over virtually everything in your letter
that has any semblance at all of being a fact. The result
is an absolute zero.

If I did not know you, then having received such a letter
as yours, I should have said:

either this man has had a nervous breakdown and is
hysterically snatching at scraps of gossip, and is quite
unable to think, reason and verify;

or it is a man who is helpless because of his
backwardness and ignorance, and who has fallen victim to
scandal-mongering;

or it is a disguised Menshevik deliberately engaging in
scandal-mongering.

Because I know you, I say to you that your letter is a
remarkable “human document” which shows how the
“founder of the opposition” has allowed himself to give way to a
desire to play opposition at all costs, and to shout, for
no good reason, about patronage, about stick-in-the-mud
commissars, about the system, etc.

You write: “After all, it is not personalities, but the
system itself that matters. Just now I raise this question:
i$ this the proletariat or a demagnetised, declassed
petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.”

That is ridiculous. In fact, your own letter is a fine
human document showing up the author as a specimen of the
demagnetised petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. For the
professional proletarians have repeatedly yielded up in actual
life demagnetised petty-bourgeois intellectuals, according
to their real class role.

The demagnetised petty-bourgeois intellectual keeps
whimpering and wailing, is put out by any sign of evil
or scandalous practice, loses his self-possession, echoes any
piece of scandal, and is all puffed up in his efforts to say
something incoherent about a “system”.

The proletarian (not one by reason of an old profession
but one by his actual class role), when faced with evil,
takes up the fight in a business-like manner: he gives open
and official support to the candidacy of the good worker
Ivan, proposes the removal of the bad Peter, starts a case—
and conducts it vigorously, firmly and to the end—against
the rogue Sidor, against the act of patronage on the part
of Tit, against Miron’s most criminal transaction, and
(after two or three mouths of experience in his new job, and
practical acquaintance with his new environment) works
out business-like and practical proposals: to introduce
such-and-such a system of commissars or political commissars,
to make the following changes in the routine here, and to
assign so many well-known Communists (with the following
record) to the specified posts.

That is the kind of proletarians, who, even after they
have lost their proletarian profession, were able to build
the Red Army and to win with it (despite the thousand
traitors and rogues, of whom thousands still remain among
the military specialists and the military bureaucrats).

That is the kind of proletarians who will never descend
to the class role of the demagnetised petty-bourgeois
intellectuals, thrashing about in impotence, yielding to
scandal, and calling scraps of gossip a “system”.

There you have my frank answer. I can afford to reply
in full once in a while—mostly I haven’t the time to do so.

For old time’s sake, let me tell you this: you need to
do something about your nerves. Then the mood will give
way to reasoning.

Notes

The Fourth All-Russia Congress of Metalworkers’ Union was
held in Moscow from May 26 to 30, 1921. The composition of the
C.C. of the Metalworkers’ Union was discussed by the
Politbureau of the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee on May 28 and 31,
1921. At the Central Party Archives there is a list of candidates
with Lenin’s remarks and this inscription: “19 of the old Workers’
Opposition.”

[2]A possible reference to Y. Kh. Lutovinov’s reply to Lenin’s
telegram of May 7, 1921. Lutovinov said that he considered as
incorrect the R.C.P.(B.). C.C. decision to send G. L. Shklovsky
to work in Berlin at the disposal of the People’s Commissariat
for Foreign Trade, and would protest against it.

[3]In a statement to the R.C.P.(B.) Central Committee of May 25,
1921, B. S. Stomonyakov and Y. Kh. Lutovinov protested against
the Politbureau’s decision on the desirability of Z. I. Grzhebin’s,
printing “Vsemirnaya literatura” books in Germany. They said
that the publishing apparatus set up by the R.S.F.S.R. trade
mission in Germany would print the books cheaper than Grzhebin,
who had been artificially raising the prices for Soviet orders.

On this statement, Lenin wrote a note to G. Y. Zinoviev:
“Write me a couple of words: what is the decision of your
commission? Has the C.C. endorsed it?” (This was a reference to the
R.C.P.(B.) C.C. decision on the Grzhebin case. It was approved
by the Politbureau on April 27, 1921.) In reply, Zinoviev wrote:
“The commission was deciding mainly on the past (old orders).
No new assignments have been given. We have agreed only to
have last year’s order completed” (Central Party Archives of the
Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.P.S.U. Central
Committee).

On May 31, the Politbureau examined the statement by
Stomonyakov and Lutovinov, and instructed Zinoviev to send them
the exact text of the commission’s decision on the Grzhebin case
which was approved by the Politbureau, together with his
explanations.